it's exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero

the taylor swift haters might have a point this time

I am an out and proud Swiftie and a relatively new one at that. As a teenager she wasn’t on my radar because I was too busy listening to Panic! at the Disco and wearing eyeliner. But when folklore dropped mid-lockdown, I listened on a whim and was immediately won over.

I dove into her back catalogue and realised that the music I had dismissed as shallow, cheesy pop was actually brilliant. Since then, I have always the first to defend her as a lyricist, a performer, and a person. But recently, I find myself agreeing with a lot of the criticism levelled at her.

The Life of a Showgirl

Let’s just get it out of the way, the new album is not great. I’m a big fan of a handful of the songs (The Fate of Ophelia, Opalite and Father Figure are on REPEAT right now), but as a whole it’s a little disappointing.

Taylor’s strength has always been her skilful and relatable songwriting. At the absolute peak of her fame, mid-Eras Tour, she dropped The Tortured Poets Department. And despite being a world-famous billionaire in the midst of the highest grossing tour of all time, the devastating lyrics resonated deeply with her audience.

For almost twenty years, she has managed to maintain a relatable, girl-next-door image thanks to her songwriting, regardless of her fame and fortune. But this relatability and skill is pretty non-existent on this album.

I’ve seen people blaming Travis — she can’t write good songs anymore because she’s no longer tortured and heartbroken, as if her ability to write comes from whichever man she is or isn’t with at the time. folklore and evermore contain some of her most inspired and brilliant writing and the majority of those songs are about entirely fictional scenarios.

AI

Some eagle-eyed fans have spotted weird inconsistencies in some of the TLOAS promo videos. Missing limbs, mismatching fonts, mangled words — all classic signs of AI-generated content.

This is disappointing for several reasons. AI is built on stolen content from real, human artists. Earlier this year Swift took to Instagram to announce that, thanks to the Eras Tour, she was finally able to buy back her masters and take possession of her music. It was a huge moment for the industry — it set a new precedence for artists owning their work and served as a cautionary tale for other young musicians who may have fallen into the same trap as Swift.

Therefore, it feels disingenuous to talk so passionately and openly about the importance of artists getting credit for their work, and then go and use AI. Especially as a billionaire who can easily afford not to.

Greed

Speaking of billionaires…a lot of this album roll-out has felt unnecessarily cash-grabby. Taylor gets a lot of flack for releasing multiple vinyl variants but that’s pretty standard these days. Brat had over 20 different variants and Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish are all at it, too.

What bothers me is the bonus tracks, acoustic versions and songwriting memos available across a smattering of variants. So, if you actually want to hear every track from the album, you have to buy it multiple times over.

And then there’s the film. I went to see the Eras Tour film in cinemas and it was well worth the price of a ticket. So this time around, I would’ve paid good money to see a behind the scenes documentary about the making of The Life of a Showgirl.

But, the Official Release Party of a Showgirl was far from this. Highlights included a music video that was available on YouTube days later, a few lyric videos, and some brief explanations about the meanings behind the songs. It was hardly the “exclusive all-access look into the making of Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album” it was marketed as.

Politics

Any Taylor Swift fan will be familiar with the scene in her 2020 documentary, Miss Americana, where she argues with her team about making a political statement on social media.

After staying silent for the majority of her career and letting Republicans claim her, thanks to her country beginnings, she decides enough is enough. Through tears, she tells her dad that she doesn’t care about potentially cutting her fan base in half, losing income or even putting her own safety at risk. She laments not saying anything during the 2016 presidential election and wants to officially endorse the democrats in the Tennessee midterms: “I need to be on the right side of history.”

So it’s heartbreaking to see someone who was once so passionate and outspoken about politics be completely silent on Palestine, trans rights, ICE, Trump, reproductive rights, and every other awful thing going on in America and globally right now.

No one is obliged to speak out on any of this, of course, but just one Instagram story or a link to a donation page from someone as powerful and influential as Swift is all it would take to make a huge difference.

But…

Taylor Swift is someone people love to hate. I’m sure a lot of it is rooted in misogyny and the belief that pop music is less worthy than other genres. And although there are some valid criticisms, the girl can’t catch a break.

We hold Taylor Swift to standards that no other artist, especially male ones, are held to. Chris Brown was found guilty of domestic violence but still sells out stadiums, Harry Styles has been silent on Palestine and no one seems to mind.

And although she’s gone quiet on the politics front, I don’t think we can assume she’s suddenly a full-blown MAGA-supporting, white supremacist. Wanting kids with your longtime partner doesn’t make you a conservative tradwife and singing about onyx nights and opalite skies isn’t a racist dogwhistle.

It’s been less than a month since the album dropped and it seems like social media is already bored of ragging on Taylor. We’ve all moved on to jewell heists and Lily Allen’s divorce.

So, am I a little disappointed in her right now? Yes. But I’m not going to hang up my friendship bracelets and sequins any time soon.